I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender.
This is a part AU/part retelling that was inspired by such other stories as Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Less Wrong. I will start at the beginning of the series and work through, so many of the lines will be taken directly from the show, but their will be many changes and divergences later on. I apologize if any of the characters seem out of character, I am just trying to make the story realistic.
Any mistakes are my own, and I welcome constructive criticism; if my facts are wrong, please correct me.
The cold morning air held a bite to it that no other spot on earth could quite match. Not that the morning air was any colder than the night air, or that the light was any different. With the season drifting into summer, the sun would not quite dip down below the horizon during the night. Instead, siqiniq would linger in the sky, casting his light across the blindingly white fields of ice, not yielding the sky to the stars or to tui. In this way, siqiniq and his children were alike, taking the sky by force and not yielding anything but brilliant light.
Of course, Katara's eyes were neither on the sun, nor the ice, but on the frigid water drifting beneath the umiaq boat occupied by herself and her brother. The water was calm, lapping gently against the tanned hides that made up the umiaq's hull. There was little movement on its surface, but shadows stirred beneath it. The fish seemed especially plump today and her brother, Sokka, was muttering some nonsense to himself about how delicious the fish would be. Watch and learn, little nukka, this is how you catch a fish. Katara only had eyes for the water.
Removing her glove, she stretched out her hand over the glassy surface and closed her eyes, calming her inner anirniq, she reached out with her mind and felt the small pieces that made up the liquid. These pieces were too numerous to count and too small to see, but she could feel the way they moved over each other and pushed and pulled against each other, creating currents. She felt the disturbance as the fish slid through the pieces, like a hand sliding through sand (not that Katara had ever seen sand). If she could alter the push and pull of the flow…
Gesturing smoothly with her tanned fingers, she felt the water respond, pulling against her and then pushing in to fill the void of her strength. Slowly, a large globule of the crystal-clear fluid separated from the surface. She struggled to hold the water aloft; the fish was resisting the unnatural flow of the water against gravity, and the salt particles dissolved in the water made their flow difficult to determine. Water dribbled out of the globule and splashed back down to the surface. Struggling, and focusing on a mental image to keep control, Katara held the water higher, pushing and pulling at the flows and currents within the water.
"Sokka! Look! I caught one!" she said breathlessly, but he wasn't paying attention. His spear pulled back, ready to thrust into the water, heedless of the floating mass of liquid hovering over their heads. The butt end of his spear pierced the globule, breaking the surface tension and disrupting Katara's control over the flow.
With a heavy splash, Sokka was soaked, the captured fish escaping into the water, unharmed. He turned to look at his flushing sister, his eyes narrowing in frustration, irritation, and no small amount of exasperation.
"Why is it," he asked, his voice seeming to war between anger and amusement, "that every time you play with magic water, I'm the one who gets soaked?" He shook the water from his hair irritably. Katara huffed indignantly.
"It's not magic waterbending. It's, it's an…"
"'…an ancient art unique to our culture', blah blah blah. I know," Sokka interrupted. He muttered something about "keeping her weirdness to herself", and Katara glared at him. Just as she was about to retort, the umiaq shifted beneath them.
All of a sudden they were moving very fast. The ice broke around them and began to shift around almost crushing them.
"It's a riptide!" Sokka shouted. "Hold on!" Katara shouted out directions as Sokka attempted to steer the boat clear of the dangerously sharp ice flows. Those jagged pieces of frozen water could easily pierce the sealskin and whalebone of their little boat.
Sokka frantically paddled at the water, attempting to avoid the large ice chunks, but to no avail. The boat became caught within two massive bergs.
"Jump!" shouted Sokka, and they both leapt from the boat onto an iceberg, barely escaping before the umiaq was crushed to splinters.
"Way to go, Sokka. Nice steering." The sixteen year old boy in question crossed his arms petulantly and glared at his sister.
"Well good job for waterbending us out of there! I knew I shouldn't have brought you along. Leave it to a girl to ruin everything." This only made the situation worse, and as Katara began to lose her temper, her latent skills lashed out at the water around her.
Deep underneath the iceberg they were sitting on, the water molecules began to agitate in unnatural ways. Currents shifted and bits of ice broke free from submerged bergs. As Katara's fury mounted, the energy in the surrounding waters spiked.
Deep beneath the surface, and ancient entity awoke.
Its mind consisted of thousands, stretching back one before another for hundreds of centuries, to time immemorial. It came awake now to a familiar sensation. The water around it moving in ways it should not, manipulated by another. The entity began to move.
"…and I'm embarrassed to be related to you!" As Katara finished her tirade, a huge jet of water surged out of the cold ocean and a giant iceberg cracked in two. The two young siblings were thrown against each other and held onto their floating piece of ice for dear life. When the waves calmed, Sokka looked up at the decimated fragments of the iceberg.
"Well, you have official graduated from weird to freakish, Katara," he stated matter-of-factly.
"You mean I did that?" she asked in disbelief. True, she had felt the water respond to her and its pushing and pulling had aggravated her mood like water sloshing in a barrel, in a sort of vicious cycle. But she didn't think it was that bad.
"Yup. Congratulations," Sokka continued with his usual acerbic sarcasm.
Suddenly, a blue glow began to emanate from the water.
Now I know that is not me! Katara thought, backing away from the water's edge. The surface began to bubble and Katara felt the air crackle with static. Suddenly, the water heaved as a giant, glowing ball of ice surged up out of the water. Katara and Sokka covered their eyes and watched the strange ice formation settle, before noticing that there were figures within. A large shadowy shape seemed to be resting next to a smaller, human-sized shape. All Katara could make out was a glowing arrow, and two glowing eyes that opened as she watched.
Katara gasped. There was someone alive in there! But before she could say a word the ice cracked with the sound of a thousand thunderbolts. A bright beam of electric-blue energy surged skyward like the signal of some god to his brethren.
Siqiniq himself seemed to shudder in the sky, and there was an interminable moment of shock as the universe seemed to reorient itself. The beam of light shot skyward at upwards of the speed of light, discharging thousands of volts into the ionosphere. The air particles were instantly supercharged and released a glowing incandescence when they collided, manifesting as a bright aurora which spread across the heavens, though it was the height of day (and would remain the height of day for three months). Animals across the ice plains felt the surge of energy into the atmosphere and cried out in shock and fear. Icebergs the size of cities broke off due to the shifting energies.
And several miles away, a scarred face looked up.
Across the frigid waters of the Antarctic, a great metal beast cut its way through the thick ice, belching smoke from a tall tower at its rear. The ice broke against its impervious steel hull and the vessel carved a path through it like a saw cutting a channel through wood.
On the deck of the Imperial Vessel Aganai, crew members in thick black parkas worked, trying to keep the ship moving. A single moment of stillness and the ice could refreeze, trapping the ship and her crew.
High up on the central command tower, a figure kneeled on the deck, seemingly untouched by the cold, though he wore only a black kimono limned in dark crimson flames along the edges. The lines around the corners of his right eye made him seem older than his sixteen years, and the effect was exaggerated by an angry red burn scar covering the upper left side of his face. The scar's presence was amplified by his shaved skull, which was bare except for a plumed phoenix tail. All in all, his appearance was extremely sinister.
At his knees, resting open on the steel deck, was a wooden book.
He read much these days. There wasn't much else to do besides practice his fuaiya-rikikan, study his charts, and wait for some sign of his quarry. He read much more now than he ever had when he was tutored back in the place of his birth, and as his eyes traced over the words, he wondered why he had not.
The bamboo book on his lap lay open, the kanji script rolling downwards, outlining the words of his thus far favorite author:
"…the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose…"
Suddenly, the text he was reading was bathed in an ethereal blue light, and Zuko Denka looked up with shock at the bright pillar of light reaching skyward. The mikonomikoto surged upward from the deck and ran to the railing of the upper deck on the central command tower. His golden eyes widened, staring upward at the colossal amounts of energy being poured into the heavens. He could feel his chi being pulled by the massive outflow, and the world seemed as though it was reorienting itself.
Sensations of shock and awe coursed through his veins, as they did for all the other crewmen who were staring in stunned silence. It was replaced first by confusion, and then elation as his brain made connections. Finally! Excitedly, he turned around to a rotund figure who sat on a small stool further back along the deck, drinking tea.
"Oji-sama! Look!"
The large man with grey sideburns looked up from his gently steaming tea and examined the auroras fluctuating across the daylight sky. He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at his much younger nephew. Aggravated by his uncle's seemingly slow understanding, Zuko huffed. "Do you realize what this means? My search is about to come to an end."
General Iroh, the Ryuu no Nishi, sighed and regarded his nephew with patient kindness.
"Prince Zuko, those are just the celestial lights. Beautiful yes, but not extraordinary. We've been down this road before," Iroh spoke soothingly. Zuko gritted his teeth in frustration. His uncle hadn't seen the pillar of light. How could he not have even felt that world-shifting wave of energy?
"That light came from an incredibly powerful source. If it is not the keshin-Avatar, then it may at the very least be a clue! I cannot let it pass by unexplored." And with that, Zuko stormed off towards the helm to order a course correction.
Iroh sighed again. In fact, he had seen the light and felt the surge, and knew from experience exactly what it meant. But he had worked long and hard to guide Zuko's path, and felt that this could only be a setback in Zuko's healing. Spirits protect that boy, he's too young to be out here, facing the dangers of a cruel world, he prayed silently. King Agni, Queen Amaterasu, protect him.
A/N: So this my experimental foray into Avatar fanfiction. If you guys like it, please review and I will try to write more (I'll write more regardless, but it will give me more motivation). Ten Quirrel points to anyone who can guess who Zuko's favorite author is.
Glossary- In order of appearance
word(language of origin)—translation
Siqiniq(Inuit)—sun
Umiaq(Inuit)—"Women's Boat" as opposed to qajaq—"kayak", Hunter's Boat
Nukka(Inuit)—younger sister
Anirniq(Inuit)—spirit, literally "breath"
Aganai(Japanese)—atonement; redemption; compensation
Kimono(Japanese)—robe-like garment
fuaiya-rikikan(Japanese)—Firebending, literally "Fire-Power"
Denka(Japanese)—His Royal Highness
Mikonomikoto(Japanese)—Crown Prince
Oji-sama(Japanese)—Uncle
Ryuu no Nishi(Japanese)—Dragon of the West
Keshin(Japanese)- incarnation; personification; the keshin-Avatar is the current incarnation of the Avatar
Agni(Hindu)—Hindu god of fire
Amaterasu(Japanese)—Japanese goddess of the sun